In the mobile robotics industry, it may be beneficial and/or necessary for some robots to have a high degree of mobility. For example, it may be beneficial and/or necessary for a mobile robot to have a holonomic drivetrain having a holonomic base. A holonomic base enables the controllable degrees of freedom of the mobile robot to be equal to the total degrees of freedom in a dimensional space. For example, for a two-dimensional space the degrees of freedom of a holonomic base are the X axis, the Y axis, and rotation about the origin—and a holonomic drivetrain having a holonomic base would be controllable in the X axis, the Y axis, and about the origin.
One solution to achieve a holonomic drivetrain of a mobile robot is to use omni-wheels on the base of the mobile robot. One example of an omni-wheel is a Mecanum wheel, which is a conventional wheel with a series of rollers attached to its circumference. These rollers typically each have an axis of rotation at 45° to the plane of the wheel and at 45° to a line through the center of the roller parallel to the axis of rotation of the wheel. However, Mecanum wheels and/or other existing omni-wheels may present one or more drawbacks. For example, Mecanum wheels may be inefficient, noisy, and/or costly. For instance, Mecanum wheels have a relatively large number of component parts and those component parts may be costly and/or time invested in assembling the component parts may be costly. Additional and/or alternative drawbacks of the aforementioned techniques and/or other techniques may be presented.